greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric
telegraph."

Until nearly ten o'clock that night the judges
talked and listened by turns at the telephone.
Then, next morning, they brought the apparatus
to the judges' pavilion, where for the remainder
of the summer it was mobbed by judges and scientists.
Sir William Thomson and his wife ran
back and forth between the two ends of the wire
like a pair of delighted children. And thus it
happened that the crude little instrument that
had been tossed into an out-of-the-way corner
became the star of the Centennial. It had been
given no more than eighteen words in the official
catalogue, and here it was acclaimed as the wonder
of wonders. It had been conceived in a cellar
and born in a machine-shop; and now, of all the
gifts that our young American Republic had
received on its one-hundredth birthday, the telephone
was honored as the rarest and most welcome
of them all.



CHAPTER II

THE BUILDING OF THE BUSINESS

After the telephone had been born in Boston,